🚀 go-pugleaf

Forgive the late post.  I just stumbled on this thread.

In article <k2k3vscs79pkrq6g51c4jq1rsllsp03p69@4ax.com>, jim patterson
<jrp32@NoSpamBellsouth.net> wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Oct 2000 12:06:51 -0400, gigi weinrich
> <gigi.weinrich@bks.gatech.edu> wrote:
> 
> >The Georgia Tech Bookstore and The Georgia Tech History Club,
> >Prometheus, present Michael Bellesiles, Emory professor and author of
> >the newly released, Arming America, on Friday, November 3rd, at 2:00pm
> >in The Student Center Theatre.  Mr. Bellesiles will lecture at 2pm with
> >a booksigning to follow.
> >Bellesisles makes it clear that in Colonial America the average citizen
> >had virtually no access to or training in the use of firearms.  How and
> >when did Americans develop their obsession with guns?  The accepted
> >answers are "mythology", says Bellesiles
> >For further info, call 404 894-1642, or email
> >gigi.weinrich@bks.gatech.edu
> 
> No doubt he does present it as 'mythology'.  See final tagline.
> 
> No doubt he will assuredly tell you that jim brady never had any
> machine guns either.
> 
> You will seldom lose manifest human rights all at once.   You will
> lose them by increments, and each new restriction will seem to be just
> a small thing until there is nothing further to lose.
> 
> ...and the wrong people will always have a gun.
> 
> "O brave new world that has such people in it"

I didn't get to the lecture, but I heard Bellesiles interviewed on NPR a
couple of weeks ago.  The interesting thing about him (and the thing
that's mystified him so much about the response to his book) is that he's
not at all anti-gun.  He's merely pointing out that the particular notions
we have about America having always been a gun culture from the very
beginning are factually inaccurate.  He traces the growth of gun culture,
as a gun enthusiast, in order to talk about where and how that culture
really developed.

The fact that so many pro-gun advocates assume that any attempt to do an
accurate history of American gun culture MUST be an attack on them is
interesting to say the least.  Bellesiles' analogy: if someone wrote a
book about how automobiles started out as prohibitively expensive luxury
items and then gradually became affordable by the masses, eventually
leading to a "car culture," no one would accuse the author of being
"anti-car."